The Protectors
"Matthew Hopkins can't hunt all of us!" Merrick FayreThe artwork isn't mine. Image sourcehere. When witch hunts terrorize the innocent, who will save them? For decades, the answer was: no one. Absolutely no one. And why would anyone bother intervening when they would be one gentleman against a horde of killers?
The Founders
But the time came by, when three men - Merrick Fayre, Addison York, and Joseph Ferdinand, students of the University of New Yorkshire of Arts, became fed up by the constant stress these militia hunters (so-called "Matthew Hopkins) put on their daily lives after Ferdinand was wrongly accused of witchery, escaping by the skin of his teeth through the loose legalism set by the clergy.Taking The Fight To The Hunters
The students gathered support from the school and took their insurgence to the streets, protesting in front of State Churches and Courthouses, kickstarting the popular "Anti-Hunt Movement". Word got out through the news, spreading their influence across Unitry territory. Now make no mistakes, the movement, though massive, was nonviolent at first. Irreverent and mocking they were, but nonviolent. But that state of pacifism could only last for so long when a member of the anti-hunt movement - Maria Ashton, was found burned on a stake inside a militia gathering hidden beneath the sewers of Chicago. The Anti-Hunt Movement took their fight to the hunters. When the hordes would show up at a suspected witch's doorstep, they would show up right after, gaining the nickname - the Minutemen of the 21st century.Protectors Becoming Official
The Anti-Hunt Movent's intervention lead to bloody skirmishes, causing losses on both sides, and turning streets into battlegrounds. The war between the two factions worsened even further until the three friends were convicted of insurrection by militia chiefs. Facing the Highest Priests given power over the churches of the Unitry, they pleaded their cases. In the end, they were judged innocent, as they contended they had no intention for the movement to escalate into a bloody war. If the priests were to persecute them, the church would have to persecute the hunters for harming civilians (the non-witch kind). And if they were to let them go, they would have to add restrictions to the list of witch identification to minimize hunts, therefore lessening the conflict. This led to the revision of the "Magna Carta Infernos", tightening the requirements needed to take down a witch legally, and mandating all hunters to present such information to a High Priest of the Reformed Council of Trent to be reviewed, opposing the time before when hunters enjoyed free reign to decide for themselves what was fitting. The rules back then were more like guidelines, after all. The situation brightened even more when secret admirers from the American Executive Branch made an official, legalistic place for them, who would work by their side to aid the matter of victim protection. Thus, the Protectors were created as a minor volunteer branch of the police corps. This would make the punishment of harming a Protector all the more severe, gaining members of the organization legal protection, along with their friendship with the police.
Type
Government, Law Enforcement
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